Google Cash Spam Policy

If you reached our website as a result of a SPAM email: Please help me fight SPAM. SPAM is a serious problem on the Internet. Please help me in finding the spammer that contacted you. Please forward a copy of the spam email you received to: spamcomplaint@googlecash.com I will take every legal recourse possible against them. Please understand that spammers often promote legitimate websites like this one, in an attempt to receive affiliate fees for referred sales. Even the largest websites like ebay.com, and Amazon.com have to deal with this problem. If you forward the email to me, I can track down the spammer through their affiliate link, and immediately have them removed from my affiliate program. My affiliate program is run through a third party that has very strict anti-spam rules. Once notified they will immediately terminate the affiliates membership and they will receive no commissions on sales made. This works well in stopping the spam, as once they are removed and will not receive their pay, they stop! So please forward me the email and I can stop them instantly. SPAM Policy GoogleCash.com does not use or tolerate SPAM! Any affiliate that uses SPAM to promote "Google Cash" will be immediately and forever removed from the affiliate program and will not receive commissions on any sales made.

Three Clicks to Spam: Google’s Hypocritical Link Selling Policy

Bloggers are buzzing this morning about Google ()’s most recent updates to Page Rank, the system that determines how much weight your site gets in its index. Many popular blogs have seen their rank (which is on a scale of 0-10) take dramatic hits, with some reportedly even falling from PR7 to PR4 (Andy Beard has a good list of those effected). This is a very big deal; many of these sites depend on search traffic and the credibility a high page rank brings to keep their business of selling ads afloat, and a drop in score can significantly lower the flow of visitors.

For Google’s part, the reason these sites are being slammed is because the company’s policy tells web publishers to “avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web.” Do some of the effected blogs sell links to such sites? Perhaps; we’ll let these folks defend themselves and their practices. But the real story is the hypocrisy of Google enforcing this policy on third-party publishers, when within their own engine they profit immensely by selling ads to spammers and so-called “bad neighborhoods.”

Here’s an example of just how easy it is to find link spam in Google’s sponsored listings. First, do a search for “low cost airfare,” and then follow this path:

1. Go to page 3 of results. Under “Sponsored Links” click the link for CheapAirfareWorld.com

2. Arrive at CheapAirfareWorld.com. Click “lowest airfare.”

3. If the resulting page isn’t a web spammer/bad neighborhood, I don’t know what is. The page is nothing but sponsored links.

The truth of the matter is that Google makes a good deal of money by allowing spammers to buy AdWords. These spammers in turn make money by creating pages with no value added content and instead using schemes to get people clicking paid links. Often, these paid links are AdSense, which puts even more money in Google’s pocket. If bloggers are selling links directly to such people, they are in turn taking money directly away from Google, which, as a $200 billion corporation, isn’t something Google is likely to be too happy about.

However, versus some of the companies Google allows to advertise in its search engine, many of those taking a Page Rank hit are producers of great content, and it’s a total shame that this policy might ultimately drive them out of business. As the buzz grows over this, it will be interesting to see what kind of response Google has to offer.

How to Report Spam to MSN

To report search engine spam to MSN, use the form on their website.

Have you seen any search engine spam lately? Instead of submitting spam reports to each engine, you can also simply submit a spam report through SEOToolSet^TM.

NOTE: If you have seen one of our Certified Analysts or Organizations engaging in spam practices, please report the spam violation through a Certified Spam Report so we can conduct a spam audit of their practices as soon as possible.

How MSN Defines Spam

MSN Search has recently added content guidelines to their website, explicitly stating that the MSNBot will see the following techniques as search engine spam:

• Stuffing pages with irrelevant keywords in order to increase a page’s keyword density, including ALT tag stuffing.
• Using hidden text or links.
• Using techniques such as creating link farms to artificially increase the number of links to your page.

Also, in an e–mail announcing the second preview release of the new MSN search, Microsoft mentioned cloaking and having duplicate content on multiple domains as things that will lead your site to being penalized or removed from the MSN Search index.

How to Report Spam to Teoma / Ask Jeeves

To report search engine spam to Ask Jeeves or Teoma, e-mail them at jeeves@askjeeves.com

How Teoma / Ask Jeeves Defines Spam

One of the most definitive sources of the Teoma / Ask Jeeves spam policy is on their Site Submission Terms page. Among the techniques that will keep you from being ranked are:

• Having deceptive text
• Having duplicate content
• Having metadata that does not accurately describe the content of a web page
• Including off-topic or excessive keywords
• Fabricating pages to lead users to other web pages
• Showing different content than the spidered pages to users
• Using intentionally misleading links
• Using self linking referencing patterns
• Misusing affiliate or referral programs

How to Report Spam to Yahoo!

If you find a site that is spamming in Yahoo!, you can report the spam through a form on their website.

NOTE: In addition to reporting spam, you can also report copyright violations to Yahoo!. To request that they remove any content published in violation of copyright protection, e-mail them at copyright@yahoo-inc.com.

How Yahoo! Defines Spam

NOTE: Altavista, All the Web and Inktomi are all owned by Yahoo!, so the Yahoo! spam policies and webmaster guidelines also apply to these search engines.

According to Yahoo!, search engine spam is webpages “that are considered unwanted and appear in search results with the intent to deceive or attract clicks, with little regard for relevance or overall quality of the user experience.” Officially, Yahoo! does not want to index sites with:

• Text that is hidden from the user
• Misuse of competitor names/products
• Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
• Multiple sites offering the same content
• Pages in great quantity, which are automatically generated or of little value
• Pages dedicated to redirecting the user to another page
• Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees
• Pages built primarily for search engines
• Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
• Pages that use methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
• Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
• Excessive cross-linking with sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity
• Pages that harm the accuracy, diversity, or relevance of search results
• Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent, or provide a poor user experience

How to Report Spam to Google

Google has a form that allows you to report spam to Google or you can e-mail Google at spamreport@google.com. Note that Google rarely manually removes websites from the engine. Instead, it tweaks the search engine algorithm and spam detection software to try and eliminate the spam technique that is clogging up the engines.

How Google Defines Spam

As part of their Webmaster Guidelines, Google outlines techniques to use to help Google locate, index and rank your website. They also specificially state that the following techniques may lead them to remove your site from the Google index:

• Hidden text or hidden links.
• Cloaking or sneaky redirects.
• Automated queries to Google.
• Pages loaded with irrelevant keywords.
• Multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.
• "Doorway" pages created just for search engines, or other "cookie cutter" approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

However you should keep in mind that these aren't the only practices that Google disapproves of. Generally, Google doesn't like their results manipulated by deceptive practices. Their recommendation for webmasters is:

Webmasters who spend their energies upholding the spirit of the basic principles listed above will provide a much better user experience and subsequently enjoy better ranking than those who spend their time looking for loopholes they can exploit.

To combat common search engine spam practices employed by rogue SEOs, Google has also posted a list of practices that should raise a red flag when you are looking for a search engine optimizer. According to Google, feel free to walk away from an SEO who:

• owns shadow domains
• puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
• offers to sell keywords in the address bar
• doesn't distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear in search results
• guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
• operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
• gets traffic from "fake" search engines, spyware, or scumware
• has had domains removed from Google's index or is not itself listed in Google

NOTE: If you are having trouble finding an ethical search engine optimization specialist, take a look at our Directory of SEOToolSet^TM Certified Analysts and Organizations. Everyone certified by SEOToolSet^TM is audited at random at least once a quarter to make sure that they are not using practices that would violate our Code of Conduct or Code of Ethics.

How Search Engines Define Spam

In terms of SEO, the term "spam" or "spamdexing" is used to describe techniques used to artificially inflate the perceived relevancy of inferior web sites. Throughout history, various techniques have been implemented with varying degrees of success. Examples of these spam techniques include hiding links, cloaking, link farming, keyword stuffing and using style controls to mask content. Since spamdexing practices are constantly evolving, SEOToolSet^TM has decided to hold our Certified Analysts, Organizations and Partners to a common SEOToolSet^TM Code of Conduct instead of outlawing certain bad practices. However, we believe that it is important to know what the major search engines specifically say about spam and what practices are definitely not allowed if you would like to rank in top-tier search engines. Plus, every ethical SEO should know how to properly report any spam that they see so the search engines can correct their algorithm

Gmail uses Google's innovative technology to keep spam out of your inbox.

Gmail fans often cite great spam protection as a key reason they love Gmail. It's relatively easy to catch spam messages; the challenge is to catch the right messages without blocking mail you want along the way.

How do we do it? Our team of leading spam-fighting scientists uses a number of advanced Google technologies. Though in many cases our best weapon is you.

Community clicks

Gmail users play an important role in keeping spammy messages out of millions of inboxes. When the Gmail community votes with their clicks to report a particular email as spam, our system quickly learns to start blocking similar messages. The more spam the community marks, the smarter our system becomes.

Quick adaptation

The same advanced computing infrastructure that powers Google search also tunes our spam filters. As new spam data is released, the scale of Google's computer network allows us to quickly modify Gmail's spam-fighting algorithms. It's often a matter of minutes between the time a spammer sends out a new type of junk mail and when it's blocked from Gmail accounts.

Powered by Google

Many Google teams provide pieces of the spam-protection puzzle, from distributed computing to language detection. For example, we use optical character recognition (OCR) developed by the Google Book Search team to protect Gmail users from image spam. And machine-learning algorithms developed to merge and rank large sets of Google search results allow us to combine hundreds of factors to classify spam.

Authentication, for everyone

Many webmail services support a single authentication system to verify senders and help identify forged messages. Gmail supports multiple authentication systems, including SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DomainKeys, and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), so we can be more certain that your mail is from who it says it's from. Also, unlike many other providers that automatically let through all mail from certain senders, making it possible for their messages to bypass spam filters, Gmail puts all senders through the same rigorous checks.